Thank you.
Last week we had some of the IPCC scientists here--Dr. Stone, for one. He and I had an interesting conversation.
I asked him about the target of 25% to 40% by 2020 and the 80% to 95% target. I asked him very specifically whether it was policy-makers or bureaucrats who made that decision, or whether it was scientists. He said that scientists had made that decision.
In his presentation there was no target for developing countries. I asked him whether that was because it wasn't scientifically quantifiable, and he said no. I asked him whether it was a decision by IPCC scientists not to quantify and he said yes.
My question to him, as a follow-up in our conversation, was whether that implied a bias on targets by scientists that wasn't necessarily scientific. He hedged at first before agreeing.
That concerns me. Have scientists ventured beyond the scientific now into the realm of policy-makers and decision-makers? As we're looking at targets that mirror the IPCC's own targets set by scientists, that is a question we have to consider, and whether or not the Chinas and the Indias and South Koreas and others take on absolute targets. That's the policy question now. And the decision not to do that modelling.... I guess science should have compelled--since it's aggregate emissions into the atmosphere--that some modelling should be done on that.
Would you agree that is somewhere the scientists have to go, as well as the policy-makers?